Sure, an absence of real competition is not desirable. The paper addresses this point too. It argues that there is no evidence that competition is unlikely to go away without salary cap and that revenue sharing may be a better solution:

"Sixthly, the RFL and the clubs consider that in the absence of a salary cap, a club will dominate the competition because it can afford to pay for the best players and 'stock pile playing talent'. Rottenberg stated that talent accumulation on one team would be limited by a club's profit motivations. Additionally, in the course of the interviews, players were asked to identify the factors considered when deciding whether to enter into an employment contract with a club. The factor most frequently identified by the ten players interviewed as of primary importance when choosing to contract with a club was: the opportunity to play regularly for the club's first team. Therefore, in a free market the ability of a club to stock pile talent may be restrained by the value a player assigns to playing. Players may be more likely to move to a team where the opportunity to play is present, and such opportunities are less likely in a team filled with many players.

Sevenly, in a professional sports league where the objective of clubs is win maximisation [... revenue sharing would achieve competitive balance by ensuring less affluent clubs are provided with additional income in order to compete for professional players. Revenue-sharing would provide teams in financially weaker markets with extra income and likely increase the number of financially viable teams. It would also be a means of achieving competitive balance without distorting competition in the market for playing services. The clubs share SLE revenue and profits, although gate receipts from Super League round-robin games are not shared."

You're saying the RFL punished them for not breaching the salary cap? When the RFL said they breached the salary they meant something else?



It's not particularly ambiguous, is it?

Possibly because you (like Wigan) have failed to come up with any explanation as to how deferring a payment changes what that payment is for.

unless I start Shi77ing £20 notes Quins RL will never be able to AFFORD to spend the full cap...

Because, as Wigan argued and would have appealed. The payment wasnt for playing in 2006 but 2007 as per the contracts stipulation.

Whilst you (and the RFL) may wish to assume that Wigan payments in 2007 were actually for 2006 there is no evidence that is the case. The fact is that the RFL hadnt got rules in place to stop that and relied on vague and spurious reasoning to 'send out a message' hence the fact the actually punishment was completely arbitrary and not as per the rules set down. That is also why the RFL didnt fine Wigan as there is no way Whelan would have paid it and the RFL would have been laughed at by whatever arbiter they found

They didn't appeal. Presumably because they knew an appeal was unlikely to succeed.



It's not complicated. The payments for 2006 that they deferred were still for 2006 when they were eventually made. It is highly unlikely an arbiter would rule otherwise hence the lack of any appeal.